Ghostwalker - Erik Scott De Bie [7]
"No," Walker said. "You will not."
Drex slashed his axe at him in reply, his shout slurred with too much ale.
Walker sidestepped and brought his arm around with a snap as though embracing Drex, allowing the axe to swipe past and the drunken lord's momentum to carry him staggering toward the opposite wall. The heel of Walker's hand darted for Drex's back and should have put him down, but the lord dived, rolled, and came up, his axe slashing across in a blur. Walker fell back, and the blade tore a long gash through his cloak.
Drex kept up the assault, egged on by the ripping of fabric, and reversed his slash.
Dark cloak trailing, Walker leaped horizontally over the flashing steel and rolled away from the deadly side chop-even when half-drunk, Drex was fast-and the steel burst wood chips from the side of a desk. Walker came up with his hand on his sword hilt and his knees bent. His hard eyes cut into Drex's watery ones. The lord was growing sober.
"You move like Torlic," growled Drex as he pulled the axe free, splintering the hardwood desk. "All jumping an' twirlin' like a lass."
"Torlic," repeated Walker, the name crashing against his mind like a wave. Torlic…
Seeing his opponent distracted, Drex slashed low.
Walker leaped, his black boots clearing the glittering steel by a hair's breadth, and turned in the air, lashing out with one foot. He caught Drex on the chin and sent him staggering back a few steps. Walker landed with a creak of wood even as Drex crashed backward into a nightstand, spilling several tankards and a pouch of coins to the floor.
The woodsman felt at the blood coming from his split lip and looked at Walker in surprise. Then his face twisted in outrage. "You're going to die now, boy!" Drex growled.
Walker shuddered, a memory flooding through him: Drex's face, red with blood that wasn't his, laughing at those same words. Walker's eyes narrowed. The world slowed as a dead calm flooded his limbs.
You're going to die now, boy!
"I remember you," he pronounced, as though intoning an elegy. "Standing over me…"
"As I will be in a moment," Drex growled. His words spoke of confidence, but his eyes held doubt.
Walker drew his sword, letting the mithral glow with silver fire. The weapon seemed ghostly, almost translucent, though surely it was a trick of the light.
"The time has come for a reckoning, Drex Redgill," Walker said softly. A familiar bleak power filled him-a terrible emptiness in which nothing existed.
Nothing but vengeance.
The axe darted, but Walker flowed out of the way. It missed cutting through his floating cloak by a breath. Drex reversed the blow, but Walker almost lazily swept his long sword down, catching the axe and throwing it back as though Drex were a child. The lord roared in frustration and slashed at him again and again, but Walker turned it aside each time.
Each time, he felt the pain of those first blows, struck so long ago…
After the fifth chop, Walker countered, his movement casual but blindingly fast. The sword seemed to snap into his left hand, startling Drex so that he missed the parry. Walker's blade slashed a line across Drex's naked torso.
Pained, the lord grunted and slashed, but Walker easily parried and countered, stabbing Drex in the thigh.
The warrior slashed again, hit nothing, took a third cut to his belly, and roared.
Drex chopped high to low with his axe. Walker parried it high and the blades locked. Drex punched Walker's shoulder, but the dark man shrugged off the blow, shifted the sword to his right hand, and answered with a left hook to Drex's jaw. The lord staggered back, Walker chopped at Drex's weapon, and the mithral blade cut through it like paper, laying the axe blade in two.
Drex looked as though he would have said something, but Walker sliced open his throat. Blood splattered the half-elf courtesan's face. Without a word, Drex slumped onto his